The
career of _Philip van Artevelde_ belongs to an era when, as Sir James
Stephen remarks, the whole of Europe, under the influence of some
strange sympathy, was agitated by the simultaneous discontents of all
her great civic populations--when the insurgent spirit, commencing in
the Italian republics, had spread from the south to the north of the
Alps, everywhere marking its advance by tumult, spoil, and bloodshed.
'Wat Tyler and his bands had menaced London; and the communes of
Flanders, under the command of Philip van Artevelde, had broken out
into open war with the counts, their seigneurs, and with their
suzerain lord, the Duke of Burgundy. On the issue of that attempt the
fate of the royal and baronial power seemed to hang in France, not
less than in Flanders.'[5] The drama composed by Mr Taylor to
represent the fortunes of the 'Chief Captain of the White Hoods and of
Ghent,' consists of two plays and an interlude--_The Lay of
Elena_--and being, as he says in his preface, equal in length to about
six such plays as are adapted to the stage, was not, of course,
intended to solicit the most sweet voices of pit and gallery,
although it has since been subjected to that ordeal at the instance of
Mr Macready.
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